I've gone all brunch!

Scrambled eggs and asparagus on toast

I came back from Spain recently with a tremendous and very seasonal appetite for asparagus. I've been eating it a lot lately and, in my opinion, its natural partner is egg (and egg!).

One Saturday at about 11.30am I made up this brunch, based on egg/asparagus desire and a severe lack of food in the house.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call this a recipe but I'll tell you how I put it all together. First I chop the asparagus spears in half to create lengths of about 5-6cm and put them into a saucepan of boiling water over a very low heat for about three minutes. I cut some ciabatta rolls open into halves and toast them, drizzling on some olive oil about halfway through the process.

My egg-scrambling method is unorthodox, but tried and tested. I crack some eggs (normally three for two people) into a bowl and whisk them with a bit of black pepper and a dash of olive oil. I then microwave them for roughly two minutes, stopping every 20-30 seconds to do the 'scrambling' bit with a fork. The oil helps them to stay moist and a bit runny.

To make it all deli and brunchy I serve the eggs delicately dolloped onto the ciabatta, with asparagus criss-crossed on top and a spoonful of hollandaise sauce on the side.

Incidentallly, I recently received a fantastic Gordon Ramsey cookbook as a birthday present and he writes about a similar recipe, but with the addition of anchovies. Back off, Gordon!

Wining on

We celebrated English Wine Week by visting a couple of local vineyards. Chilford Hall, in Cambridgeshire, is fairly well-known locally as a conference centre and civil wedding venue. Unfortunately, this was the focus of the tour rather than the wine itself, which didn't make for a particularly interesting visit! We did get to see the wine-making equipment; their wine is mostly processed and bottled on-site in a small but highly organised 'shed' on the estate!

Of course, the major draw of any vineyard visit is the tasting session and we eagerly awaited our chance to sample the award-winning wine. The white wine, primarily made with Reichensteiner and Schonburger grapes, is fairly successful; I liked the Chilford Dry 2006 and the Schonburger 2006 in particular. I wasn't overly impressed by any of the reds or their sparkling wine, though. There's something too harsh and a bit yeasty about both the white and rose sparkling ones.

At the end of the week we visited Sandyford vineyard in Great Sampford (close to Saffron Walden). It immediately has a different feel as it's part of a farm and it's the home of owners Sue and Mike, who are always around to greet visitors. There's no wine production on site; the grapes are sent off to larger vineyards to be fermented and bottled. We had a stroll down to look at the vines themselves - again, lots of Reichensteiner grapes but also Bacchus, Rondo, Regent and Triomphe d'Alsace.

We've been here before so I already knew which wine I liked and I was looking forward to the tasting. Again, the red wine isn't very impressive; our climate just isn't suitable. The English rose, on the other hand, is amazing and completely converted me to pink wine! I am also a big fan of their sparkling wine - expensive, but as good as a medium quality Champagne for certain. It's made from Bacchus and Reichensteiner grapes in the traditional method (the same as Champagne) and has the typical English gooseberry/elderflower flavour. It's amazingly refreshing and uplifting on a summer's day.

English wine is now a far more common sight in supermarkets and it's well worth spending a little more - particularly if you're lucky enough to live in Essex and spot the Sandyford wine on the shelves.

Back in the saddle

I've been so busy lately I never did get around to reviewing the places I visited for London Restaurant Week!

I went to Brasserie Roux, for which I had fairly high expectations, only to be disappointed. It was alright - the food was nicely prepared and well cooked but was fairly unimaginative. I can't think of anything particularly outstanding about the meal itself. In fact, the highlight of the evening was the bar at the Sofitel which we visited before dinner. The cocktail menu was extensive and impressive and my vodka martini was mixed perfectly. I also liked the cute individual shaker and the plethora of delicious snacks that came with it!

My second London Restaurant Week adventure was lunch at the Cinnamon Club, not far from where I work. At the other end of the spectrum, this meal exceeded my already high expectations of this fantastic restaurant. I ate mutton with a delicately spiced onion sauce, mutton being something I had never tried before. It's sort of gone out of fashion, I suppose, but if this meal was anything to go by I'd recommend giving it a try.

I think London Restaurant Week, on the whole, is a good thing if it makes people try somewhere new and promotes some undiscovered gems. My own experience, however, made me think that I'd be better off browsing Toptable for special offers at places I already know and trust!

English Wine Week

I love where I live for many different reasons, not least because of the excellent food and drink produced in the area. Several vineyards can be found a short drive from my house and, from what I've tasted, the wine they produce is of a pretty good quality.

This is my main reason for supporting English Wine Week, which starts tomorrow (Saturday 24 May). I love to see bottles of local wine on sale in our supermarkets - it fills me with a bit of East Anglian pride (which sounds as if it should be a local ale)!

English wine is usually a little more expensive than wine of equivalent quality from other countries, because it costs more to produce. It's all done on a smaller scale and often the grapes are sent to other vineyards to be processed, which adds up. We can, however, bring the cost down if we support it and buy English wine when we find it for sale. It's worth our support, I promise!

Some weeks are longer than others

Hey everybody: it's London Restaurant Week! Oh, except it was really successful last year, so they've actually extended it to a fortnight, confusingly.

Anyway, it started on Monday 14 April and goes through to ... er, a fortnight after that. Lots of top London restaurants are offering a two-course lunch for £15 and a three-course dinner for £25. This is about the price you'd normally pay for a special offer, set menu or Toptable deal but, from what I've heard, the menu for London Restaurant Week is usually less restrictive and better quality.

I'm taking advantage of this wonderful event twice this year. I'm going to Brasserie Roux tomorrow evening and to the Cinnamon Club next Friday. Reviews to follow, I promise!

Super noodles

Sticky chicky noodles

I've never really bothered all that much about oriental food - Chinese, Thai, etc - because it's not my favourite kind of food and I had no idea how to cook it. Just recently, however, I've taken more of an interest for one reason and another and I've learnt a few recipes. Nowadays I'd say I'm pretty good at noodles!

One of my favourite recipes is one I found in Delicious magazine and have slightly adapted for my own tastes. So here you go:

First of all, mix together about four dessert spoonfuls of soy sauce, the juice of one lime, a teaspoon of chopped ginger (from a jar, in 'new Delia' style!), a few crushed chilli flakes and four dessert spoons of honey. Add to this two smallish breasts of chicken cut into smallish strips and leave it to do its business for ten minutes or so. Then transfer it to an ovenproof dish and put in the oven (medium hot) for about 15-20 minutes.

Next fry some suitable vegetables with a little bit of groundnut oil in a big frying pan or wok. I usually go for either a pre-prepared packet of sliced cabbage and leek or a bag of 'generic stir-fry vegetables' (I'm so Delia!). But if I was starting from scratch I'd use very finely sliced savoy cabbage, red onions, carrots and courgettes.

Separately cook some fine egg noodles and as soon as they're ready add them to the frying pan with the vegetables. When the chicken is ready, take the dish out of the oven and carefully pour or spoon the sauce over the noodles and vegetables. Leave the chicken in the dish for a while (in the oven to stay warm) and give the noodles a thorough jiggle around to make sure the sauce has covered everything. Serve massive plates-full of the noodles with the chicken placed on top, with a nice glass of fruit juice or guava Collins!

Ooh, and hey: remember I said I'd suggest some recipes for dinners that could also create leftovers for lunch? This one's the daddy!

Sunday service at the Church

We visited friends in Northampton a while back and, at long last, got around to trying The Church restaurant. It's a converted church (funnily enough!) and I've always thought it looked fairly classy as we've driven past. Although I'd never seen the menu I had read a few good reviews online and, all in all, had fairly high hopes.

Well, I can honestly say that I wasn't in any way disappointed. The entrance is quite impressive and we all looked around with 'ooh's and 'aahh's at the bar area with its high rafters and large stained glass window. We went for Sunday lunch so things were fairly quiet but it was clear to see that the bar could easily be lively with a good atmosphere on a weekday evening.

The decor of the restaurant itself is modern but understated to let the architecture of the church itself take centre stage. I sat next to another stained glass window and the sunlight sent beams of blue and purple light onto our table, which was rather pretty!

The food is at the high end of the 'gastropub' spectrum: a few brave, different choices but nothing pretentious and decent-sized portions. My starter of garlic mushrooms baked with pancetta and mozzarella was well constructed and delicious. One of my friends ordered scallops, which looked to be cooked excellently.

For the main course I ate a fish pie - perfect plain and simple Sunday lunch food cooked well with nothing fussy about it. One friend ordered the roast beef, served in the traditional way; he had good things to say about the quality of the meat but left quite a lot because the portion was enormous! The other two ate the salmon, which was apparently cooked well but was served with far too many 'branchy' bits of watercress and far too little lime dressing.

For me (strangely for me!) the highlight was the pudding. Everyone else had a hearty-looking slab of sticky toffee pudding (and none of it was left, so I'm guessing it was good!) but I chose three scoops of sorbet. The orange and raspberry scoops were lovely, but the champagne-flavoured scoop was utterly fantastic!

Add to this some excellent, well-judged service and some good music at just the right volume and I'd say the balance of everything was more or less right. So if you're ever passing through Northampton ...